B2B measures the wrong 40%. The other 60% is where deals are won. Be findable before the buying group forms.

Sexton originally trained as a sound engineer and fell into marketing completely by accident, drawn by the mix of art and science that had attracted her to her first career. She came in through sales, a common route, and found B2B comfortable precisely because it is a sales-led environment. Marketing back then in B2B was really sales enablement, she says, a world the discipline has thankfully moved away from. What has stayed constant is her fascination with human behaviour.

Technology has made the bottom 40% of the funnel measurable, and the industry has become obsessed with it, going round in circles on fine margins. There is an awful lot of navel-gazing over what can be seen, while the 60% of the journey nobody feels in control of goes untouched.

Attributing revenue matters, but in B2B, Sexton argues, marketing needs to move away from justifying its existence through attribution and start balancing filling the funnel with measuring it. That unmeasured 60% is, in her view, the single biggest opportunity in B2B right now.

There is a groundswell around brand, though not yet a swing. B2C marketers arriving with brand experience are realising B2B is very different: the complexities of buying groups, hidden buyers, and the length of the sales and marketing cycle. That input is welcome, but B2B marketers must also define what brand looks like for their own discipline rather than importing big ad formats for reach.

Well over 80% of vendors are already known to the buying group before it even forms. If a brand only runs performance and demand generation, it misses the moment the group forms, and its deals are being won and lost without it getting a seat at the table. Be present, findable and arresting when buyers find you, and make clear what you stand for, all of which can be done in a targeted way.

Asked about the roughly 95% of B2B buyers now using AI to find vendors, Sexton says brands should embrace it rather than fear it. Making LLM comparisons is not difficult if you take a systematic approach to the whole funnel and accept that buyers may already have compared you before landing on your website. Being findable, consistent and easy to understand for humans and machines has to be the brief from CMOs.

Ledger Bennett uses the Havas converged platform, with a B2B version powered by LinkedIn data, and works with specialist intent partners rather than building proprietary tech. Intent signals are never as clear-cut or true as anyone would like. They are indicators, to be read in the context of every other data point.

Ledger Bennett was arguing against quarterly campaigns 12 or 13 years ago. Many clients have some form of always-on, but it is often outdated and unfit for a world that must serve humans and machines. The model needs a layer of always-on plus big moments and spikes. Run only spikes and, when a buying group forms and is in market, you are not findable, and you miss deals and a seat at the table.

The job is to say the right thing on the right surface across paid, owned and earned, now buyers are searched by LLMs as well as humans. Proprietary research that just sits on a website waiting to be found is wasted. The job is to simplify the complex, find the golden thread through the buying group, and get engaging content out early so the group sees you as a natural choice.

The days of one or two expensive, high production value pieces a year are gone. B2B buyers are consumers too, used to more authentic formats. Brands that let customers and employees talk about a bump in the road and how they solved it together give the audience what it really wants to know: what you are like to work with.

The linear model of how a buying group moves is something the industry has already moved far past. Buyers come in and out of journeys, intent ebbs and flows, and journeys stall and restart when budgets or reorgs complete. Someone downloading a universal top-of-funnel piece is not a lead, and kicking people through a process until some drop out only alienates future customers.

The industry is too obsessed with measuring the visible funnel and, as a result, not truly customer-centric. Great thought leadership has very little to do with a brand's products. It is about being useful and helping the audience do their job better, which is where brand recall and preference start to build.

The ability to be hyper-personalised with every buyer, cheaply and with fast test-and-learn, is powerful, and the progressive CMOs who embrace it will win advantage quickly. LLMs and AI agents will increasingly act as buyers within the group at different stages, and brands should embrace that while watching where it adds value and where it falls short.

As marketing gets more algorithmic there is a huge risk of sameism. The winners will get the delicate balance of art and science, data signals and human instinct. AI will not destroy jobs or remove the need for creativity, ideation and critical thinking, it will increase it, and people will use different parts of their brains more of the day.

B2B brands are becoming braver about their identity. Sexton points to Salesforce turning its brand into a career path, and to IBM's enduring line about no one ever getting fired for hiring IBM. The winning brands understand not just what they do but why they exist, and why an audience would trust them for the long term. Finding the one answer to so what still counts for a lot.

For newcomers, the advice is unchanged: bring a passion for solving problems and an appreciation of B2B's complexity, working with brands nobody has heard of that make the world go round. Think in the end-to-end journey rather than silos, and keep the humans at the end of the content, reporting and measurement as your single source of truth.